The price of motor vehicle fuels generally includes a fairly substantial tax that is normally allocated to the construction and upkeep of public roadways. Purchasers of motor vehicle fuels thus normally pay a specific amount for each gallon of fuel purchased. Insofar as these taxes are allocated to public roadways, state taxing authorities will generally rebate the road tax portion of the fuel's purchase price if the purchaser can demonstrate that the fuel was not used in traveling along public roadways.
Although fuel tax rebates have been available for some time, such rebates have not generally been claimed, principally because of the difficult in maintaining adequate records to document the amount of such rebate. Obviously, the records must be inherently trustworthy and not susceptible to falsification. The burden of maintaining such records has, to date, outweighed the benefit of obtaining the rebate, heavy equipment, such as cranes, cement mixers, etc., that utilize a great deal of fuel while stationary at a fixed location.
Hour meters for recording the operating time of motor vehicles or certain components of motor vehicles are in common use. For example, gasoline and diesel engines are often serviced at specified time intervals, such as the oil in a gasoline engine being routinely changed every 100 hours of use. These conventional running time recorders measure only a single operating parameter and are thus incapable of allocating between various circumstances of running times, such as running time when the vehicle is in motion and running time when the vehicle is stationary. As a result, conventional running time recorders do not record the time that the motor of a motor vehicle is running while the vehicle is stationary, which would serve as a basis of obtaining a fuel tax rebate.
Although the fuel tax rebate is proportional to the amount of fuel used while the vehicle is stationary, the rebate is generally calculated on the basis of the time that the vehicle is stationary. State taxing authorities generally have tables listing the amount of fuel consumed for each hour of use while the vehicle is stationary. The amount of fuel used while the vehicle is stationary is then calculated on the basis of these tables from a record of the stationary running time of the vehicle.